Caroline Wiess Law portrait

Abstract

This photograph of Caroline Wiess Law is part of the Vera Prasilova Scott portraiture collection. Scott was a studio photographer and the wife of a Rice faculty member. She took portraits of many prominent Houstonians in the late 1920s and early 1930s.Caroline Wiess Law was an oil heiress and art collector, and a major philanthropist in Houston. She is perhaps best known for her endowment bequests to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, including donations of works of art by great artists such as Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Joan Miro, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Robert Motherwell—to name a few. In 1998 the Museum honoured her 40-year commitment as a passionate and dedicated supporter by renaming the main building in her honour. Wiess also supported programs at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, and University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, also in Houston. She is the granddaughter of Louisa Elizabeth Carothers Wiess, benefactress of Southwestern University, and is the daughter of Harry Carothers Wiess and Olga Kieth, benefactors of Rice University